Baghdad bomb attacks kill 19, mostly women

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bomb blast killed 13 female government employees on a bus on their way to work in eastern Baghdad on Monday, and a female suicide bomber killed five people outside Baghdad's Green Zone compound, police said.

A separate attack on a police patrol in the popular central shopping district of Karrada killed one man and wounded five people, police said.

The attacks were the latest in a series of explosions in the Iraqi capital, where violence has broadly fallen but insurgents have shown themselves still able to stage large-scale attacks.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said in a statement it had stepped up security in the capital.

"The security forces have strengthened procedures due to the explosions targeting several districts in Baghdad," Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf said.

"Among (these) ... are to deploy more intelligence and detection ... the battle now is a battle of information."

Police said the women killed on the bus worked at the Trade Ministry. A security official at the hospital, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak, said he had counted 13 bodies at the morgue. Four wounded were treated.

Baghdad security spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi said he had reports that a dozen were killed and most of the victims burned alive inside the bus.

He said a bomb had been fastened to the bus. Such "sticky bombs" are increasingly being used by militants to assassinate government employees or security officials.

In the other attack, police said a female bomber wearing an explosives vest killed five people and wounded 12 outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses U.S. government employees and some Iraqi ministries.

A Reuters reporter saw police hosing down blood from the streets after the bombing. Pieces of flesh spattered the concrete blast walls protecting the compound.

The U.S. military said two of the dead were Iraqi soldiers.

Female suicide bombers are a trademark tactic of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, who use them because they are less likely to be searched. Moussawi said he had reports the woman was mentally disabled and did not know what she was doing.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Abbas, Aws Qusay and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Janet Lawrence)